MAD Magazine Leading the Way
Homophobia Cured by Prayer!
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Without a doubt, MAD magazine is one of the three or four most consistently excellent periodicals of the last 25 years. I saw an interview with the publishers about 10 years ago, and they wouldn't give straight answers to the interviewer's questions but just kept right on cracking jokes. They live their periodical, which is the highest praise we can think of. -- Publisher |
from the Grassroots News Network hotline --
MAD Magazine: Homophobia can be cured!
In its year-end issue, MAD Magazine listed "the 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of ’98." Number 20 on that list was the anti-Gay ad campaign which appeared last summer, urging Gay people to change their sexual orientation through prayer. In response, MAD shows "a newspaper ad we’d like to see": Labeled "I’m living proof that Untruths can win you votes," the article is a dead-on parody of the intolerant newspaper ads.
In MAD’s article, a self-proclaimed "former homophobe" testifies that it is possible to come out of homophobia and to stop voting Republican. He says: "I knew gay bashing just wasn’t right. That’s when I went home and prayed ‘God, please help me to understand why I keep acting like a freakin’ moron.’"
The "ad" is putatively sponsored by the "Alliance Against Gary Bauer and Other Intolerant Little Twerps" and other satirically-named groups.
This isn’t the first time MAD has tackled Gay issues: at the start of the Gays in the military debate, they ran a picture of two G.I. Joe figures holding hands under the headline "Toy Manufacturers lift Ban on Gay Action Figures."
Asked how the intolerant ad campaign made it into their Dumb 20, MAD co-editor John Ficarra said: "It earned it. We were all really offended by the original ads."
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The current issue of MAD also includes a delightful parody of Consumer Reports called Condemner Reports.
What's your opinion of intolerant little twerps, or of MAD magazine? Tell The Progress Report:
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